Bitcoin Continues to Lose Steam in Silvergate Shutdown Aftermath, Most Altcoins Record Losses

Bitcoin slipped by eight percent to trade at the price point of $19,978 (roughly Rs. 16 lakh) on Friday. On national as well as international exchanges, BTC has recorded a similar overnight market movement trajectory. In the last 24 hours, the value of Bitcoin dropped by $1,770 (roughly Rs. 95 lakh). BTC began losing steam after crypto titan Silvergate Bank scared investors with the possibility of another FTX-like industry debacle last week. Silvergate later confirmed that it will shut operations amid regulatory pressures and the impact from the collapse of FTX..

With a dip of 7.81 percent, Ether's value saw a substantial fall on Friday. The value of ETH, at the time of writing, stood at $1,414 (roughly Rs. 1.16 lakh), according to the crypto price tracker by Gadgets 360. Overnight, the price of ETH tumbled by $123 (roughly Rs. 10,095).

“Overall, the market is experiencing uncertainties surrounding Silvergate, potential interest rate hikes, and the upcoming US jobs data. The market sentiment may also have prompted traders and investors to sell off due to the potential threat of higher interest rates,” Edul Patel, the CEO and Co-Founder of Mudrex told Gadgets 360.

Most cryptocurrencies followed BTC and ETH and recorded loses on Friday. These include memecoins Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, as well as Litecoin also saw their values fall amid the ongoing crypto meltdown.

Various stablecoins showed different movements amid the ongoing volatility. Tether and USD Coin, for instance, rose in value with minor hikes. Ripple on the other hand, settled with dipped pricing.

The overall crypto sector valuation sunk by 6.73 percent in the last 24 hours. The market cap of the crypto industry on Friday stood at $930.77 billion (roughly Rs. 76,39,468 crore) as per CoinMarketCap.

“Fed Chair Jerome Powell has declared that as inflation remains uncomfortably high, interest rates might continue to be increased and remain elevated for longer,” Parth Chaturvedi, Crypto Ecosystem Lead, CoinSwitch told Gadgets 360. “With access to US banking routes getting more difficult for crypto players, trading liquidity remains shallow and, in turn stressing overall crypto markets. All eyes on upcoming Macro data next week, as a ‘risk-off' sentiment would hurt crypto prices further. Also worth monitoring is the fallout from Silvergate and any further industry casualties that it brings along,” he added.

Cosmos, Dash, and Qtum were among the few cryptocurrencies that saw their values rise on Friday.

“Closer home, CRE8, an Indian Rupee denominated Virtual Digital Asset (crypto) index was down 9.19 percent in the past seven days. The Index value stood at Rs. 672.43 at 8 AM, March 10, 2022,” Chaturvedi noted.

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